What’s 3,500 feet wide, 6,055 miles long and 2.9 million acres big? That’s wider than Hoover Dam, bigger than Yellowstone National Park and almost three times as long as the Mississippi River. This behemoth goes by the name of the West-Wide Energy Corridor, and if you live in the West it could soon devour a […]
An octopus wants to eat the West
Posted inWotr
Let’s reform the 1872 Mining Law – finally
Like many Westerners, I grew up with the luxury of unlimited adventure outdoors. I could wander around, fishing rod in hand, looking for the next hidden pond near my family’s cabin in northern Colorado. That was before I began working in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado as a mountain guide for a kids’ […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA Snap your fans for the late Beverly Allen, a petite woman just over 5 feet tall who became a high-kicking, feather-bedecked showgirl at the age of 80 with the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies. This is a group you have to be at least 55 years old to join, and Allen, reports the Los Angeles […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Madame Merian and her passion for metamorphosis
In Chrysalis, Montana writer Kim Todd travels to Amsterdam and Surinam and brings back the story of a pioneering field scientist, one whose intellectual descendants still wander the modern West. Todd traces the 17th-century life of Maria Sibylla Merian, the daughter of a German printer, who defied convention to become one of the most diligent […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
New West, Next West
The New West is one of the easiest default settings for contemporary American fiction. Start with a dissolute or desperate main character and throw him down in an urbanized, or, better still, suburbanized landscape. Add a little Western scenery – mountains and rivers, just out of reach – but focus on the housing developments and […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Where do you draw the line?
As a journalist, I’ve watched many forms of civil disobedience in the West. I’ve known EarthFirst! tree-spikers and interviewed armed, tax-evading Freemen. I’ve seen “green” grandmothers lie down before bulldozers to stop the blazing of new logging roads across public land, viewed the carcasses of dead grizzly bears and wolves shot down by opponents of […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
The wrongs of property rights
Ray Ring’s examination of so-called “property rights” lawyers’ legacy missed two key points (HCN, 12/10/07). First, while Mr. Ring hinted at the edges, the article never directly confronted the fundamental contradictions in the “property rights” ideology. By opposing a rancher selling grazing permits to a conservation trust or a farmer selling land for ecosystem restoration, […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
It’s back to the tofurkey
As a conservation biologist, I find the subject matter and tone of the marmot-cooking essay reprehensible and unethical (HCN, 12/24/07). HCN is a nonprofit media organization whose mission is to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the West’s lands. One of the key themes underlying land-management issues in the West is our […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Playing cowboy at the wolf’s expense
Let me see if I have this straight: In Catron County, N.M., a place notorious for its anti-federal government and anti-environmental stance, we’re shooting and trapping wolves that have been fraudulently set up to violate the “three strikes” rule by the lackey of a wealthy foreigner who ranches for pleasure and not need (HCN, 12/24/07). […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Take this wolf and shove it
I lived in the city most of my life and like the rest of the city folks heard and believed most of the lies handed to us by the “enviroMENTALists” (HCN, 12/24/07). I now live among the ranchers of Catron County, N.M., and have horses. I moved here to enjoy this beautiful countryside while riding […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Uh, no bag of gold here …
John Dougherty’s story about the Mexican wolf program left out important facts on the impact of documented wolf incidents on our children and rural families, the psychological trauma, and habituated wolves seeking out humans and human use areas (HCN, 12/24/07). The Miller family had the Durango pack documented at their home 21 times; where is […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Treehuggers and treecutters unite
Small foresters in Washington get a break that might just keep them in business
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Two weeks in the West
Wide-open spaces and burly, gas-guzzling automobiles go hand in hand in the West. After all, how else can you get to your favorite climbing crag or hiking trail? Perhaps by driving a burly rig that guzzles a lot less gas. Or so California and a handful of other Western states had hoped. But the U.S. […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
An energy oasis in the political desert
The presidential candidate stood on the back of the train in Helper, Utah, and declared: “The fuel for our machine age economy will be absolutely dependent at some time or other upon this great West.” The candidate was Harry Truman; the year, 1948. Besides being prophetic, the speech was significant because it was the last […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
My short tenure with a blind pigeon
There is a blind pigeon – a pigeon born without eyeballs – living in my house, and I’m not very happy about it. It’s my mother’s fault; she has a new habit of adopting these eyeless creatures, which are hatched in the barn rafters at my family’s ranch. When the mama bird is done feeding […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Tackling Utah’s trash
NAME Issa Hamud AGE 48 HOME LIFE Married, eight kids. DRIVES 2004 Ford F-150. HOBBY Four-wheeling with friends. NEXT PROJECT Hamud hopes to build an Environmental Education Center on the site of the current landfill once it closes. It will feature a glass wall exposing a cross section of the landfill to its 30-foot depths, […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Misplaced Jurisdiction
Justice in Indian Country needs an overhaul
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Dear friends
WELCOME, LILY JEAN The latest addition to the HCN family, Lily Jean Massart Isaacson, arrived on Thursday, Dec. 20, to proud parents Denise (our office manager) and her husband, Bob. The 6-pound, 7-ounce girl is doing well; no word on how much sleep mom and dad are getting. GREG HANSCOM SPOTTED … IN MARYLAND? Former […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
A political speech the West needs to hear
“One of our most urgent projects is to develop a national energy policy. The United States is the only major industrial country without a comprehensive, long-range energy policy. Our program will emphasize conservation … solar energy and other renewable energy sources. … We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent. There is […]
Posted inArticles
The Appeal Deal
The West’s national forests remain in legal limbo. For four years, the U.S. Forest Service has been trying to overhaul the rules that govern the creation of forest plans, the “blueprints” that describe how each forest will be managed and protected. And for the past two years, the process has been locked in federal court. […]